The Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine recently graduated its second class. The commencement was a wonderful “feel-good” event, complete with beautiful weather, happy graduates and proud families. The ceremony closed with the newly minted physicians rising to their feet and reciting the oath of the physician. In a nice touch, the other physicians in the audience were invited to renew their commitment to the profession by joining in. I found the whole thing joyous, and the opportunity to publically take the oath again was a moving reminder of what doctoring is all about.

Coincidentally, I also had the opportunity this week to lead one of the sessions in Northwell’s Physician Leadership Development Program, part of a half-day session with Sven Gierlinger, our organization’s Chief Experience Officer, and Jill Kalman, the Medical Director of Lenox Hill Hospital, devoted to the voice of the patient. My bit was about our “transparency project”to publish our physicians’ patient experience scores on our public website. I used the story of how and why we did that as a case study that tied together the themes of physicians driving change and of improving the care we provide to patients and their families.

It was only after the fact that it occurred to me that there was a profound connection between the two events.

There are a few themes that permeate this blog – the impact of new technology on medical practice, evidence-based care, health care financing, and a patient-centered approach to care delivery. The recent dust-up over the release of surgeon-specific outcome data touches almost all of them.

ProPublica, a not-for-profit organization devoted to investigative “journalism in the public interest” got the ball rolling last week with the publication of their “surgeon scorecard.” They compiled 5 years of Medicare data (2009-2013) on 8 generally elective surgical procedures: Knee and hip replacement, laparoscopic cholecystectomy, lumbar spinal fusion (broken out by anterior and posterior approach), “complete” prostatectomy, TURP and cervical spinal fusion. For each one, they identified a list of principal diagnosis codes associated with a hospital re-admission within 30 days of the surgery that could reasonably be interpreted as complications of the index surgery. For example, if a patient had undergone knee replacement and was admitted within 30 days with a principal diagnosis of “infection due to prosthesis” then that “counted” as a complication of surgery. Details of the methodology were provided online. The complication rates were adjusted by patient age, gender, and a few other variables, and their user-friendly tool allows for easy look-up of complication rates by surgeon or hospital.

Steven Brill made a name for himself with an article in Time magazine back in 2013 entitled “Bitter Pill,” in which he harshly criticized how health care providers (especially hospitals) inflate the costs of their services. The piece created a lot of buzz, and some backlash from hospital groups and others. Now it seems that Mr. Brill has had a bit of a “sick-bed conversion.”

He has a new piece in the January 19th issue of Time called “What I learned from my $190,000 open-heart surgery: the surprising solution for fixing our health care system.” Since Time won’t let you read the article without subscribing or paying, I will save you the trouble. It seems that what he learned is that health care providers – the same ones he vilified in 2013 – were pretty great when they were taking care of his heart in 2015. In fact, he now believes that the way to “fix” healthcare is to “let the foxes run the henhouse” by allowing large integrated health systems become insurance companies and compete on price and “brand” and regulate their profits to assure that they are acting in the public interest. Yeah, well, no kidding.

I have been a big proponent of seeking the feedback of our patients regarding their experiences with our care, and of pushing our organization to be more transparent about the results. I believe that sharing performance motivates everyone to raise his game, and that we should embrace valid ratings on specific measures. On the other hand, I have always thought that global “rankings” divorced from specific performance measures make little sense.

As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in the New Yorker a few years ago rankings of complex, multidimensional things like cars or colleges are inevitably flawed, because they don’t account for the fact that different people will value various attributes in different ways. There is no “best car” since I may value handling and acceleration, and you may value styling and safety. Likewise, there is no “best college” because one student may value class size or athletic facilities while another values research opportunities and proximity to a large city.

Author

This blog isn’t about sharing information; it’s about starting conversations. And since good conversations require good listening, I decided to call this blog “Auscultation.” Ira Nash, MD, FACC, FAHA, FACP

The views expressed here are solely the personal views of Ira Nash, MD and do not necessarily represent the policy or position of Northwell Health Physician Partners, Northwell Health or any of their affiliates, employees or physicians.

About Ira Nash, MD

Ira Nash, MD is the Executive Director of Northwell Health Physician Partners, and Senior Vice President of Northwell Health, and a professor of Cardiology and Population Health at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine.